Sin Harvester
by Sixth Limb of Sephiroth
Summary: Armageddon begins and Vincent is being torn up inside and out by age old nightmares come alive. His will fades but there just might be enough to save the Planet and its people...at his expense. Sin Harvest: Endgame. -Old fanfiction is old.-
1. Part 1: Dreams with Claws

**_Disclaimer:_** You can't steal anybody appearing in this fic because they aren't mine. They're all copyrights of Squaresoft, the lucky bastards…

_Sin Harvester:_

_Sow the Seeds of Sin Under the Fall of Blood_

_By: CursedAngelofSephiroth_

_ This is my second fic while I work on my next projects. So, here's another FF7 fanfic for your reading pleasure._

_**Dreams with Claws**_

A hundred years had passed on the Planet. The oceans continued to rage. The mountains continued to tower to the sky. The clouds continued to wander the heavens. The forests continued to breathe life in every cardinal direction. And man continued to live on, to strive for survival over eternity.

But another wished for an end, at least for himself. An end to his own personal eternity. The pain of immortality. The pain of suffering alone deep within the dark recesses of the earth, body festering with sin and sadness. Weeds and wildflowers dared to thrive on his dark, tainted blood, fashioning a web to further shackle him to this earth, where his pain and agony was eternal. Although he had atoned for one sin, he had yet to repent for others. But he didn't want to move, for he would feel that he was still alive. But he felt his life trapped inside him, regardless. Dreams. They had tiny claws that would pinch and poke at his brain almost like hungry insects. And they would leave behind waste, thoughts bereft of wings, doomed to trudge through his mind without end.

_…Lucrecia…_

_…Sephiroth…_

_…Jenova…_

_…We were all damned by him, by it. By me. Because I couldn't save you… I could only watch you suffer and die before my very eyes, while your son would soon inherit the same legacy, to become the prodigal progeny of the devil, Jenova, and die, at last, by her hand. And my hand…_

_Lucrecia, my love, I am so sorry. No matter what I may do to right every wrong, someone may end up getting hurt every time. And I will only fall deeper and deeper into darkness, with no hand of light to help me and spirit me away to the peace I so seek in slumber._

_Perhaps my only savior is…Death, but…_

There was a knock on the lid of his coffin. After years of silence and stillness, his limbs of hard dried clay struggled to the tiniest life they could muster, chipping piecemeal at the stillness, his lips cleaving the silence in twain as he labored for breath beyond thick dust that tasted of ancient mold. Beetles skittered over his eyelids.

"…cent…"

He breathed in long and slow. The net of dry brittle weeds over his body crackled, threatening to crumble while his lungs, his chest, inflate with cold stagnant air.

"…V…cent…"

He opened his eyes bit by bit. His ears were ringing. For decades he had listened to nothing more than the miserable sluggish thumping of his half dead heart and the whistle of a sly wind in the depths of the mansion. But basically, he slept in the sweet embrace of quietude. He longed to return to his oblivious slumber. Sleep…

"…Vincent…"

There was a raspy scraping of wood on wood. Someone had begun to move the lid of his coffin from its place. As much as he wanted to turn over, his muscles could not yet allow it.

His eyes opened onto the blue-gray stone ceiling of his chosen tomb. He groaned quietly, squinting against the virtually nonexistent light of this underground chamber.

"Vincent, wake up," said a deep, almost purring voice.

"…" A crimson blur arose in his sight, as bold as a still flame. A wisp of orange fire swished to and fro beyond the blur. He closed his eyes and slightly turned his head to the side.

"Wake up, Vincent," the voice insisted. He demurred to comply and tried to fall asleep again. He was then forcefully nudged by something soft yet heavy. One eye crept open for a second look at this intruder that invaded his tomb and disturbed his long, long siesta. A sharp eye of burnt umber peered back. The crimson blur spoke with a touch of apology in its low, rumbling voice, "Sorry to wake you but there's something I wanted to talk to you about. Mind getting out of your coffin and lending an ear?"

Vincent groaned.

"Take your time."

He toiled to get his arms working correctly. Disuse had made them stiff as boards and his muscles were just as disobedient. He curled and uncurled his fingers, shredding the cobwebs that adorned them. His claw was still there, cumbersome, cold and hard. Symbol of his sins. The clawed dreams lingered on the edge of his subconscious. Grounded waste, his thoughts.

"…ungh," he grunted softly. Vincent steadily lifted his hands to the rim of his coffin and raised himself up. The weeds clung to his jet hair now grown past his knees, clung to his red cape crusted with moss and mold.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," said the one who raised him. Vincent focused his murky red weary eyes onto the crimson blur.

"…Red XIII," he managed with dry lips and throat. He glanced about tardily. Nothing had changed in his dark and dreary tomb. The discarded skeletons of times past stacked along the walls. But there were little differences here and there. Stray weeds from the surface had overwhelmed the place. They adhered to the walls, found shelter among the bones and even within his very coffin. He looked back to Red XIII.

"It almost looks to me like if I came any later, you would BE earth," the creature remarked a bit jocosely.

"…how long has it…been? How long since I went back to sleep?" Vincent asked as he picked at the debris stuck to his body.

"Practically a whole century."

"A century… Does that mean that everyone is…?" The other nodded solemnly.

"Yes. Cloud, Tifa, Cid, Barret, all of them… It's kinda weird, but Cloud was the first to go," Red divulged. He shook his head, his fiery mane swaying in that subtle movement. "Maybe that Mako poisoning had finally caught up with him…"

"…so they're gone. And only you and I remain from that time," Vincent muttered in his usual monotone. Immortality was a hideous thing to possess. To outlive the friends whom he had never called friends but, nevertheless considered them such, at least in some miniscule manner.

"I know what you're thinking. It's hard to accept the reality of such a thing. I didn't want to watch time pick them off one by one but I had no control over any of that. So I made do with the time I still had left with them, just lived it up. So I have no real regrets," he nodded confidently. Vincent allowed his eyes to drift down onto the golden claw of his left arm. _If not for this claw…If not for this claw…_

"…Red…"

"Hey, it's just Nanaki now. I got rid of that name a long time ago," the creature told him. "Anyway, I'd feel more comfortable at the inn than here in the basement of Shinra mansion. And, well…"

"…"

"You…look like you could use a good cleaning up, too. Tidiness is next to godliness or something rather like that. Ahem…"


	2. Part 2: Insurrection

_****_

Insurrection

Nanaki dragged Vincent from Shinra mansion of Nibelheim and checked in to the inn. Though a little reluctant to do so, Vincent decided to clean himself up as his companion had suggested. He saw himself in the mirror. His face was the same but blanketed with a layer of dust. His hair was spangled with old dead leaves and tiny insects. He resembled a wraith risen from the forest floor, forced to haunt the earth once again.

Vincent went into the bathroom and switched on the light. It possessed all the basic necessities for human hygiene and cleanliness, necessities he'd been away from for a hundred years. He studied his clothes for a moment. He was a little less than surprised to see how well they held up for so long a time. They were made for durability, after all. The moss and mold could be scraped off easily and…

He sighed and started the water in the shower. He unraveled the lengthy ribbon of red cloth from round his head and unfastened the cape from round his shoulders. He stopped and stared at the tiled floor. "…hmm…"

After a few minutes of standing as still as a statue, Vincent unhurriedly resumed taking off his clothes, leaving them piled on the floor and stepping into the shower. Once in, he only stood there and let the hot water rain down upon him. Having spent days upon months upon years in his coffin in the basement of Shinra mansion, where it was cold and dark and damp, he welcomed the soothing heat of the shower. He came near to shivering as the last of the cold was driven from his body. But he knew that this little instant of bliss had short wings and a short life.

"Ah…" Vincent slumped down in the shower, drew up his legs and closed his eyes. He took time to reflect on current matters. A century of uninterrupted slumber. Sure, there have been a few to venture into the vicinity of Shinra mansion from time to time, some he had known straightaway to be his friends, their kind voices like capricious butterflies flitting by his ear on their way to oblivion. His friends. Friends… All gone save for Nanaki. Friends that he never said goodbye to, that perhaps would've done the same before he died, which was very unlikely to ever happen anytime soon. Damned cells of Jenova, making him a monster so that he had to cut himself from the life he could not enjoy as everyone else did.

Vincent lifted his face to the running water, felt the drops pelt his lids. When it hit his lips, it almost tasted…salty. He held his claw over his face and opened his eyes.

"Ahh!" He fell back. The shower rained scarlet upon him. Blood. He soon found his entire body drenched in it. He hurriedly scrambled out of the shower, grappled tight to the curtain, breathless.

There was a knock at the door.

"Vincent? Are you alright? I heard a bump," Nanaki said.

Vincent briefly glanced at the bathroom door then back at the shower. He gasped silently. The water was…water again. There was no blood, only water. He looked down at his hand.

No blood.

There was no blood.

He sighed with his claw to his chest. He was glad that, with his claw, he could feel nothing. Not the scars on his chest from past musings of suicide, nothing. "…wasn't real… It wasn't…"

--

"Alright, now don't you feel better?" Nanaki asked lightheartedly. Vincent glared from his spot near the window then away. Nanaki cleared his throat. "Um, right… So, on to what I wanted to talk about. Well, I've been traveling around for a while now and I've noticed something strange near all the places I've gone to. Ever since that day…"

"…what is this strange thing you noticed?" Vincent queried.

"I… The Lifestream," the other answered. Vincent folded his arms in each other, but not without due interest. "It's like in Mideel. The Lifestream is coming up to the surface in plenty of places now. Even Midgar. You know, I think Midgar is sinking, too. It's odd."

"Have you drawn some sort of conclusion from this?"

"Mmm, nothing concrete. The Lifestream might be just acting up, overflowing, drying up, any number of things. There's probably no real reason to worry about it but, I dunno, it just scares me a little. Anything's possible."

Vincent nodded near invisibly and went back to gazing out the window. From where he stood, he could view the jagged peaks of the Nibel mountain range, and just beyond he could discern a swirling green streak of light reaching towards the sky.

"…The Lifestream rises up from the ground?" he said.

"Yes, like spiraling towers. There's a humongous jet of Lifestream right now in Cosmo Canyon. At night, there's a green glow over everything. Well, it's there in the daytime for that matter, as well, but it's more noticeable at night."

"Hmm…"

"Sometimes I wish Grandpa were still alive. He'd have some answers to what's going on…"


	3. Part 3: Resurrection

_****_

Resurrection

Drifting, floating, flying on nothingness. It was strangely blissful here, where there was no pain nor sadness, no anger nor hate. All that existed here was an all-encompassing light.

Yet, at the same time there was anger, there was sadness. Even a tinge of hate and a lingering pain of death and unfulfillment.

_Peace… But this wasn't what I wanted. I had dreams and they were thwarted. Smashed like a fly on a window. Was it all for nothing? But I am not yet defeated. Never will I be defeated. My spirit is too strong, too strong for even the Planet to hold. My dreams will come true. I have the power to make them come true. No matter how long it will take, I will fulfill my one true destiny. I will arise once more…_

The womb of the Planet loomed overhead, as majestic as the yellow moon on a clear black night. And the smaller but equally brilliant orbs like giant pearls dotted the dark space above with streams of light that twined about each the other and onward into endless dark. An imaginary wind howled.

And he was trapped here and he was going to be trapped here forever. A grave of dreams and souls in an ocean of light. He suffered such duress and loneliness in this sacred prison of his. He looked up at the great womb hanging like a golden pendulum over his head. He lent out a pleading hand to the pulsing sphere.

_Why must I remain here? I refuse to lie down like a dog and vanish from existence. I have to go back, I must. No one can keep me here. I will find my way back._

_-Yes. It is not your time to disappear. Fulfill your grand dream. The Planet requires that you do so. Only you and your power can accomplish the will of the Planet. Now go forth and escape from this earthly limbo. Set the cogs of fate in motion and allow your grand designs for the Planet to unfurl and blossom into something most glorious._

_Yes, I shall._

_-Yes…_

"Hello? Are you alright? Wake up," cried a voice in all urgency.

Cold. He felt cold. It was a wonderful feeling, one he'd not experienced in years, save for the clammy bitter clasp of death around his heart. It was divine. And to hear anything but the eerie howling of that abyss. Absolute heaven.

"Let's get him back to town," said another voice. He felt something warm drape over him, then careful hands take him up and carry him off. He cared less about where he was going to be taken. The only thing that mattered to him now was that he could breathe again. Sweet, pure cool air. He relished it. It was all coming back to him now. His lungs remembered. His heart remembered everything before his death and imprisonment. The blood that pumped through his veins. The blood. That blood. His blood.

A gentle heat arose all around him. He almost wished to stay wherever he was forever but he couldn't. He had a mission. But…he was weak. He had to rest before he could go any further. Rest. It had been too long since he last rested like this. In that prison, all he could do was wander aimlessly and brood on broken and confused thoughts after being sealed away. His blood bubbled in his veins, the heated anger mounting on the surface of his skin. Ah, yes. Skin. It was wonderful to have flesh again. To touch and to feel again. And this warmth was what he wanted to feel. So much better than the cold.

--

"Hey, wake up." That voice again. It sounded like a girl calling to him.

"…mnh…" He groaned. His arms and legs seemed like jelly, as though he'd never used them ever in his life before. As though he had just been born.

"It's been three days now. It's about time you woke up," the voice told him.

"Don't push him," said the second voice which belonged to a man.

"…oh…"

He tried to open his eyes, to which he also had to remember how to use, with some success. His eyelids half-opened upon the blurry figure of a round-faced young woman peering down at him. Dark blond hair framed her near angelic face underneath a woolen cap. She sighed and smiled.

"Finally, we almost thought you'd fallen into a coma," the woman said in relief. She leant in close and continued on with, "I don't know what you were doing lying out naked in the snow fields but unless you're a glutton for frostbite, I suggest you don't go back out there like that, okay? It's for your own good."

"Jas, move over a minute." A man with salt and pepper hair approached the bed in which he laid and put the back of his hand to his cheek. "Well, he's gotten a lot warmer than yesterday, that's good. But I think he still needs a little while longer to recuperate. You feeling better, buddy? Mind telling me what happened to you for you to be lying naked and unconscious out in the snow the way you were?"

His eyes narrowed at the man that hung over him like a doting father. He faced away in the opposite direction.

"Don't wanna talk, huh?"

"Don't push him, Uncle Gio. You said so yourself," the woman noted.

"I did, didn't I? Well, color me curious because stuff like this hardly ever happens around Icicle."

_Icicle. So that's where I am. Near the Crater…_

His eyes gradually shut against his two rescuers from the cold. He needed more rest, to regain his power. And then came darkness once again, but not the darkness he so abhorred from his prison in death. It was merely the darkness in slumber. Wonderful slumber.

--

It took several more days for him to wake up again. But even during his deep siesta, he sensed the movement around him of the man and woman who took him in.

When he did awaken…

The girl, whom he recollected to be called Jas, occupied the same room as he, rooting around under the bed he slept in. His hand that dangled off the side brushed the pate of her head and this roused him to wakefulness. He sluggishly sat up, body bent forward. Jas rose up from the floor with a box under her arm.

"Oh, you're up. Did I disturb you?" she asked. He stared woodenly at her. The woman placed the box near the foot of the bed and stood up, brushed at her knees diligently. "Maybe you're strong enough to get out of bed now?"

His being quiet unnerved her. She fidgeted with her hands.

"Oh, you know, I never properly introduced myself, have I? My name's Jas, Jas Heartlin. Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, my uncle and I were the ones who picked you up from the snow fields north of here. And may I ask what your name is?"

He continued to stare at Jas. Then he started to raise a half limp hand toward her but let it fall short. He dropped his head to where his hair veiled his face.

"What was that?" Jas bent close. She had sworn she heard him say something. "Could you repeat that?"

"…Sephiroth…"


	4. Part 4: Slave of Sin Be Not Alone

**_Slave of Sin Be Not Alone_**

Nanaki took Vincent to Cosmo Canyon to see the phenomenon that concerned him. What was said was true. Some miles away an immense stream of dazzling green light stretched to the sky and beyond. When he was taken closer, there was a pit as wide as a large lake, where the Lifestream pooled close to the surface of the earth. He also noticed that a lot of plants were beginning to grow in its proximity.

"Hmm…" Vincent stood at the very edge of the hole in the earth spewing Lifestream heavenward. He pondered more on this. If he shared Nanaki's beliefs…

_Perhaps the Planet IS overflowing with too much Lifestream and is merely discharging the excess, like a fire giving off heat. Or… Could it be possible that someone might be drawing Lifestream in the same fashion as the Mako reactors once did? Could the Planet have been infected by some unseen parasite while I was asleep and is sucking up its blood?_

"Vincent," Nanaki called to him, "Let's go back."

--

The two returned to Cosmo Canyon and went up to Bugenhagen's old observatory.

"So… What think you on this now, Vincent? Came up with any good theories of your own? I'd love to hear them," Nanaki said. Vincent leant on the wall next to the door with arms crossed.

"…You said a while ago that you'd been traveling before coming to Nibelheim…" Vincent uttered.

"Yes."

"Did you go to the far north?" he inquired. Nanaki pointed his snout to the air and sniffed for a second.

"Far north? You mean… Uh, yes, I have," he replied.

"And?"

"There's a Lifestream jet in Corral Valley and another in…the Crater and…" Nanaki's voice trailed off. His single eye narrowed to a suspicious slit. He trotted nearer to Vincent. "Wait… You're not suggesting…?"

"…One theory of mine is that…like the reactors Shinra once used, there might be something out there drawing off the Lifestream," Vincent explained.

"Huh? I…would have never… But, are you still suggesting that…? I mean, that was over and done with a hundred years ago."

"Mmm," Vincent sounded softly. He knew what he was saying. Sephiroth. There was hardly a doubt in his mind that he was gone, his body and mind and soul scattered to the ether, but…life had a tendency to make the impossible possible and the infeasible, feasible. Like the human ability to make monsters of their own kind. And the delusion that humans had godlike power and were arbitrators over all things natural and unnatural and even supernatural. _So many of us became victims because of that sentiment_, Vincent mused darkly, v_ictims of…science._

He shook his head and briefly glimpsed Nanaki as he paced the floor.

"Hmm…"

"…what are you thinking?" Vincent asked.

"Oh… What if what you said could actually be true? That some entity of a sort is threatening the Planet? Even worse, that it could be…Sephiroth all over again. Oh, I hate to worry like this. Any more and surely, I'll shed profusely from stress. Oh," Nanaki rumbled fretfully. He then quickly twisted about on Vincent. "And what if it IS Sephiroth? How could we be able to stop him? When everyone else was alive, it was still difficult."

Vincent did not respond to that.

"I'm going out for a walk. Maybe that will calm me down." Nanaki padded on out of the observatory, leaving Vincent to his own devices.

He went up to the second floor where the telescope was located. He tapped the lens with his claw, and then bent forward to look into it. Sky, slightly tinged green by the exposed Lifestream in the area. Space. A few early stars peeking through the dark orange blanket of dusk over the canyon.

"Vincent…"

He straightened up at the sound of his beckoning.

"…who's there?" he muttered lowly to the air. He instinctively placed his fingers on the peacemaker against his right hip.

"Vincent, come…"

"…who's there? Answer me," he demanded in a whisper. He peeked below to the first floor before descending. He leapt down near quietly, his cape blooming round him for a second then fluttering into stillness. He scanned the room. No one.

"Sad little demon with an angel's face. You're mine…"

"Hah!" Vincent drew his gun in one lightning quick motion and spun in a circle.

But…

He was forced to his knees within mere seconds. His peacemaker clattered on the hardwood floor at his side.

"Didn't I say you were mine?"

"You…" He detected the cold blade very lightly graze his throat. His claw was held against his back with a powerful grip. With his one free hand, Vincent steadily brought his hand up to the blade threatening his neck.

"Uh-uh."

"Ungh!" Vincent was suddenly pushed forward on his face. Hurriedly, he flipped over.

"You can't escape me."

"…Sephiroth," he muttered.

"Oh, you remembered me. I'm flattered," he returned with a sinister grin across his pale lips. He was so close, his hair brushed Vincent's face; he was so close he could smell him, and it was a cold smell. The eyes. Those eyes. Like…

"…no."

"Not happy to see me…Father?" Sephiroth said, still with that grin. Vincent winced, not only by what he said but by the chilly breath that rolled off his tongue.

"…Don't call me that. I'm not your father," he replied sternly, but lowly. Sephiroth snickered, a sound that made even Vincent's blood run a little chill.

"Well, not by blood but… It was because of you and that woman that I became what I was. You couldn't save me from the big bad scientist. You couldn't save me at all. So the only thing you could do was kill me and hope that that would help you atone. Well, guess what? You're wrong," he hissed in a playful and singsong tone. Vincent frowned dismally to his words.

"…"

"Don't looked so depressed, Father. I'm here now, so everything will be all right…" Sephiroth leant in towards the other, closer than ever before. Vincent shrank back but it was unavoidable. Sephiroth's cool lips clamped hard over Vincent's. His eyes were wide in horror as they decried the mesmerizing emeralds of catlike eyes in their unmoving indifference. And even more to his dread, he could feel Sephiroth's tongue enter his mouth like an alien probing thing.

"STOP!" Vincent pushed his assailant away, backed up against the wall.

"You're no fun. But no matter, you'll be mine. Most assuredly, you will be mine. Sooner or later, one way…or the other!" Sephiroth thrust his blade at Vincent.

"Aah!" As the great sword pierced his chest-

"Vincent!"

The voice of Nanaki jolted Vincent back into reality. He shivered in disbelief. He pressed his hand to his heart; it drummed rapidly in his chest. He looked at his companion who in turn returned his gaze with one of subtle shock and curiosity.

"Do you protest my wanting to go on walks? You sounded pretty adamant there," he noted a tad matter-of-factly.

"…what?"

"Excuse me if I can't fly like you but us not gifted with flight have to get by on whatever means available," Nanaki retorted.

"No, I…"

_He wasn't real? Was he just a figment of my imagination? My nightmares? What…_


	5. Part 5: No Flesh Shall Be Spared

_**No Flesh Shall Be Spared**_

"Sephiroth… That's a…nice name, unique name," Jas said with a small nod. "Uh, oh… Right, I, um, bought some clothes for you yesterday. I'll bring 'em up right now," she told him and twisted on her heels towards the door.

"…thank you."

"Huh?" Jas turned back around. "You say something?"

"…thank you for…all you've done," Sephiroth murmured. He raised his head up and laid eyes upon the young woman once more. Jas came near to blushing. She shook her head humbly.

"Oh, no need to thank us. Anyone would've done the same thing," she answered in a tiny chuckle.

"But now…"

"Pardon?"

"You've served your purpose…" Sephiroth rose from bed and stepped toward Jas. She held her balled up fists to her breast in slight hesitance.

"I-I've what?"

"But don't worry, a paradise awaits you where you're going…"

"What…?"

--

"Jas?" Uncle Gio called up the stairs.

Thump.

"Jas? What was that?" He began to ascend the stairs. A little gleam of light caught in the corner of his eye at the top. "Jas, you're up there, right?"

A shadow crept down the steps from above. But it wasn't a shadow for there was nothing casting it. It came down a couple of steps before Gio bent over and warily poked a finger at it. He pulled back and stared. It was liquid, dark…red. It was blood, with fleeting warmth.

"Oh my god… Jas?! Jas!" He bolted up the rest of the stairs, sidestepping the blood. "Jas, are you-"

A figure lay fallen on the floor. His niece, in an ever-widening puddle of black.

"Jas, no!" Gio fell on his knees next to Jas's slain body and drew her into his arms. He cried. "No, no! Why… Jas, you can't do this…"

"Do not shed such precious tears. You'll join her soon enough."

"Huh…?"

Sephiroth came from behind, Masamune in his grasp. He raised it with one hand above his head and swiftly brought the blade down upon the unsuspecting man. He grinned as the sword drove through with ease. The man went down without even so much as a gasp from the sheer force of the bloodthirsty blade.

"Now, you'll be together. And the Planet will receive you with open loving arms," uttered Sephiroth, as with both hands gripping the hilt of his sword, he drove it in further, piercing the hardwood floor. He snickered.

_Arise. Rise from your grave of earthly light and earthly blood. Let your strength supreme shed the shadow of final and holy judgment upon the wicked and ungodly. Harvester of sin, be reborn. Reclaim what is rightfully yours… The world._

"Yes…Mother. That is my one sole purpose, to step up to my right as heir to the Planet. To be ruler…agh!" Sephiroth was swept off his feet by sudden agony in his chest. His heart pounded so hard he felt it would leap out onto the floor. He clutched his chest, reeling in quivering breaths. His muscles became taut. He laughed. "Yes… I will become a god once again. And no one will stop me…AAAHHHH!"

--

"C'mon, kids. Out of the snow and inside. It's time for lunch," called a woman to her children. Two brothers frolicked outside while building a snowman. They groaned in disappointment at the sound of their mother's call.

"Mom," one of them whined.

"You heard me. Inside. Now."

"Aww," both kids moaned. They trudged sullenly back to the house.

One of the siblings stopped in his tracks. "Hey, bro, what's that?"

"Huh?" They both wheeled round. "Whoa, what IS that? Looks like somebody turned a green light really high in that house over there."

"That's where Jas lives."

"Kids!"

The ground commenced a low rumbling that made the sibling boys cling fast to each other. Shafts of green shot up from the snow here and there. And the rumbling turned to shaking and the shaking to quaking and the quaking to…

"Kids, get inside now!" their mother shouted. The boys scrambled across the snow for the safety of their house. The earth under their booted feet fissured, some of it rising three feet into the air and the rest, sinking below, revealing frantic Lifestream. One of the boys tripped when a chunk of earth spontaneously leapt up below him.

"Get up!"

A nearby house split down the middle and collapsed into the Lifestream, dragging its screaming occupants with it. The mother of the children ran outside to help.

"My babies!"

"Mom, wait!"

The ground crumbled.

And came the emerald moonrise of the end.


	6. Part 6: Wine of Blood and Tears

_****_

Wine of Blood and Tears

Vincent and Nanaki stood out at Cosmo Candle that evening. They both still pondered the strange occurrences involving the Lifestream. Nothing much had changed for the past few days, but Nanaki remained unsettled.

"Mmm, I don't feel right just sitting here on my haunches all day. There has to be some explanation for all this, there just has to be…" Nanaki grumbled.

"What if we found someone who knew what's going on, an expert in the physiology of the Planet and the Lifestream?" Vincent suggested. His companion sighed tiredly.

"The biggest expert I ever knew of was Grandpa and he's… And I don't trust any scientist to know what they were talking about as far as I could throw one. And WE certainly don't have the means to determine the problem other than waiting for it to become better or worse and then seeing if we could do anything to remedy it."

"…wait," Vincent said. He glanced at the sky.

"What is it?"

"The glow of the Lifestream. It's not so bright anymore," he remarked. Nanaki looked about him.

"You're right." He directed his eye to the southern skies. The jet of Lifestream. It was virtually a pinstripe in the dark sky. "Hmm. What could it mean? Nothing bad, I hope."

"…never rely on hope anymore than you should. It is very fickle with its followers and merciless to those it forgets."

--

_I no longer feel him there. I no longer heed his cries echoing on those ghostly breezes. I no longer see him wading through that endless sea. Why? Why'd you let him go? Was his will still too powerful for even you to contain? Planet, won't you show me an answer? Why? How? How did he free himself from your prison?_

_She still exists in some form or another, so she still has some influence over him. And his will was always powerful so he could have freed himself whenever he pleased. But you had defeated him and his dream. And he recognized his defeat and stayed in his prison. But she, like a buzzing ambitious and opportunistic bee, whispered sweet nothings in his ear, goading him to pursue that dream once again. And now, he's risen to accomplish it._

_I can't let him do that. I have to stop him. But how? How can I go back?_

_I'll help. Since Holy came that day, it's fallen asleep here until it's ever needed again. I'll ask it to lend some of its power to you._

--

Vincent went to the local inn later that night to rest and be alone. But he didn't really want to go to sleep. Not after a hundred years and the clawed dreams that stalked the borders of his conscious and subconscious mind. So he only laid down in a bed and leered at the ceiling. He contemplated for a bit. Sephiroth. Was that really him or just a wakeful nightmare that his mind conjured up? And what he said. That he was the father of his demise because he couldn't save him, and Lucrecia, from Hojo's demented experiments. And…that he said that he would be his. All of it disconcerted him. And that kiss. A sour taste arose in his mouth just thinking about it.

"Why must I be tortured every waking moment of my life and slumber? Is there no safe haven for me where I can be free of all pain?" he whispered to the ceiling. Of course he knew it wouldn't answer back, and for that, he was sort of grateful. He inhaled and sighed longingly. At least when he was in his coffin, he had some peace, however insignificant it was compared to anything else.

He closed his eyes, even knowing that action would likely invite unwanted slumber or thoughts or worse. He wouldn't be surprised if the latter occurred. It would just confirm that he wasn't meant to have any peace, whatsoever. He was only meant to suffer.

"That is right, little demon. You are only meant to suffer, never to experience happiness or anything like it ever again. You are nothing more than an object, a possession. My possession."

"No…not again," he said in a hushed tone of terror. He tried to reach for his gun but his hand refused to obey because some unknown force held it in place.

His entire body was rendered useless.

Vincent was dipped into darkness, weightless here in this seeming void. He feared that if he opened his eyes, the darkness would steal his sight, but he did so, anyways. And it was dark. Forever black night, boundless and everywhere. And it gave shelter to faceless things that howled and wailed and snapped and snarled like ravenous beasts. Icy claws formed of the blackness seized each his limbs.

"You can never escape. You belong to me and I will have you, completely and totally. All of you. Your body, your soul, your mind, your heart, all of you. And I will make it mine for eternity."

A pair of hands sliced into the living darkness that ensnared Vincent, slowly advancing upon him with desirous fingers. He struggled to liberate himself of the clutches of the faceless things.

"Let go of me!" he cried out.

"Never…" The yellow eyes of the faceless creatures came into being, all reflecting Vincent's horrified expression. They lit up the black void like stars, and the creatures were no longer faceless. They were demons with sharp teeth and horns and webbed wings that made the darkness whirl like countless colliding vortexes. This was the lair of Chaos, the evil seed of Jenova that festered within him, a parasite that was ever so slowly devouring his humanity.

"Mine."

Sephiroth.

But it wasn't Sephiroth. It was another clothed in his skin. Just as before. He understood that now.

"How can you think that? Who else would I be?" he said in mock pain, and then he chuckled menacingly as he came closer. When his pale hand neared his captive's face, Vincent jerked back. Sephiroth drew away as though a shunned leper but came forward once more, taking a lock of his hair in his slender fingers and twining the strands about them casually.

"…Jenova…"

"You bear my legacy in your veins. You cannot deny me. Never can you deny me. You are my tool to use as I see fit, just as he was, just as they will all be, one by one, someday," said the pseudo-Sephiroth. He brought his lips dangerously near to Vincent's, his breath stealing the other's breath, and added, "But as for now, you are mine, my little toy, my little tool."

"You can't do this to me," Vincent hissed, although knowing of how blatant his fear was evident, billowing up from his skin and clothes.

"I can and I will." The pseudo-Sephiroth commenced plans for his captive, stripping Vincent down to nothing. He made his nails like bird talons and slashed Vincent's denuded body, each slash greeted with the spilling of inky tepid blood. He screamed, his cry eclipsed by the demons' chaotic noise. "Tormenting you is so very sweet because there are so many ways…"

"Stop!"

"So many ways…" Pseudo-Sephiroth inclined toward a gash he made on Vincent's chest, over his heart, where the blood slowly trickled down in thin trails. These tiny trails he licked up studiously, lustfully. "Your blood is like wine and thick as honey, however black as ink."

Vincent fell quiet, his breaths quivering when they left him.

"Keep yelling, screaming, moaning, whatever noise you can make. It is music to our ears," uttered his captor. Pseudo-Sephiroth kissed him lightly on the lips, licked them with his tongue. He ran a finger along the wound on his uncovered chest then rammed it in, causing it to bleed flesh. Vincent groaned in agony.

"Stop…" he voiced feebly.

"I want you to beg. Beg, my demon toy," his captor commanded.

"You will not do it? There are ways…" The demons' claws dug into Vincent's arms and legs deeply. His body writhed and twisted in sheer torture, he feared his bones would splinter and break as frail twigs under a careless foot. He screamed but refused to beg, for whatever shreds of pride he still had forbade him from doing so. "Still nothing? Then how about this?"

"No!" Pseudo-Sephiroth took Vincent's naked bloody legs in his arms and positioned himself between them.

"Who knows? You might even enjoy this."

Vincent gasped in perfect shock. He strived frantically to free himself but it was futile. Regardless, he kept trying. He just wanted to escape. He didn't want to feel what was soon being done to him.

"Yes, just keep on struggling. But you will never escape because you are mine…"

_If I cry tears as I am raped, they won't be blood, as there is still humanity left within me. I will cry the tears of beloved man and hope that they deliver me from this morbid l pain that I suffer._

"Cry. Beg."

"No…"

--

"NO!!" Vincent screamed.

"Hey, you! Stop screaming, you're disturbing the other patrons," someone screamed back. Vincent shot up straight, out of breath. He glanced hastily about the inn, and then at his claw.

"You… You did this to me. Hojo. You put her inside of me where she can never leave, where she will haunt me forever with nightmares that make me wish for death. I can't…stand it anymore. Can't stand…it…" Vincent got up from bed and rushed out of the inn.

He left Cosmo Canyon altogether.

There was nothing for him there. There was nothing for him anywhere. Because Jenova would always be near wherever he went. He was cursed. Cursed.


	7. Part 7: Emerald Dawn

_****_

Emerald Dawn

Vincent fled to the highest peaks of Nibel and watched the sunrise creep across the horizon. The glowing pillar of Lifestream in the mountains had apparently disappeared as the one in Cosmo Canyon did. It was a curious change in events but not the most urgent in his mind at the moment.

Vincent squatted on the edge of a precipice jutting off the northern side of the tallest mountain of the Nibel Mt. range. Heralds of the dawn soared overhead, screeching and circling the vault of the light blue sky. It was a beautiful scene but he wasn't touched by it. He was angry and miserable at the same time and these feelings consumed him to the very brim.

"Why now?" he asked himself. "Why? But I've always had nightmares. Born of my guilt. What I wasn't able to do for Lucrecia, and ultimately, Sephiroth. But… Is it time? Is it finally time for Jenova to truly take me over? To destroy my human side and unleash the shackled monster? Jenova… I can't stand it. But there's nothing I can do. Nothing…" He looked at his claw. This was it. This was Hojo and underneath…Jenova, and Chaos. The Beast that tears at his intestines trying to get to freedom above his skin.

His-

A distant rumbling sounded. Vincent scanned the horizon, standing erect. Besides the sunrise, something else rose as well. A moon, or what resembled a moon, inched upon the land with the seeming speed of a snail. Like Lifestream trapped in a perfect sphere. Beneath its rays materialized a shade like nothing else he ever saw.

"What is that…?" He narrowed his eyes to attempt a better view of the mobile spectacle, but it was still too far off in the distance. A sense of uneasiness churned in the pit of his stomach. "This is… What is this feeling? It's wrong, all wrong. Whatever that thing is, it's…wrong."

Vincent lingered about Mt. Nibel, observing the great spherical object become larger and larger by the hour and by the day. After the second day, it was about as intimidating as the sun but never setting and never rising, only moving forward, its shadow following in unbreakable pursuit. Vincent found himself held in too great suspense and restlessness because of this mysterious thing that unnerved yet fascinated him at the same time. He was unsure of what to do. What would happen when it came close enough? Was it really dangerous was the most important question that Vincent focused upon.

More days passed and the sphere was only miles beyond Rocket Town, its luminous glow stretching out far before it. It was mesmerizing. Then Vincent knew. It was one thing he often pondered for himself, secretly, but not for…them.

"…Death…"

The Light. The light of that emerald moon shone down on Rocket Town, bathed it in its eerie beams, and for an instant, it was all too beautiful. The light. What the dead must see welcoming them when they returned to the Planet. Calm. And the people of Rocket Town would be experiencing the very same soon enough. For he knew.

There was a blinding light that lasted for but only a second, subsequently followed by an earsplitting boom. Vincent was knocked off his feet by the intensity of that boom, momentarily disoriented.

"…ugh, what…"

He labored to recover, pulling himself up from the ground. He gasped.

The land was awash in flame, the burning shade of the emerald moon. He knew it. His instinct whispered that this would happen. He could almost smell impending doom and death nowadays. Because he had been subjected to such in earlier years and was no stranger to it, no stranger at all. And now, as he stood on the peak of Mt. Nibel, he witnessed destruction of a people. He was overwhelmed with shock, a shock he hadn't felt since Lucrecia's fall.

"That… It will be coming this way, too," he muttered to himself. "Coming…to destroy. Whatever you are, you'll be coming…"

--

Vincent hastened back to Cosmo Canyon to meet with Nanaki. He found him out by an unlit Cosmo Candle. Heeding Vincent's return, he hurriedly trotted up to him.

"Vincent, where have you been? Did you hear? A sonic boom went through the canyon this morning. No one knows what caused it yet," Nanaki said.

"It was something in the sky," Vincent responded promptly.

"What?"

"It was…I don't know what it was. But Rocket Town is gone."

"What?!" Nanaki exclaimed. "Gone? How?"

"That thing, it… Light came down and everything was on fire. I don't know if anyone survived..." Vincent shrugged and shook his head.

"No. That's not good, that's not good at all! What'll we do? How do we stop it?"

"No doubt it's going to come this way."

"Which way did this thing come from? Do you know?" Nanaki asked, on the verge of snarls.

"North," Vincent replied.

"From the north… Hey, maybe it came from the Crater. Maybe it IS Sephiroth all over again! Vincent!" He looked to the other with not-quite-rage in his eye. "We have to do what we can, no matter what. We can't let anything happen to the Planet, not again, not like before. We worked too hard to keep it. And no one's going to take it away. No one."

When Nanaki and Vincent went to Nibelheim, they were astonished by what they saw. Even though the sphere in the sky was nowhere near where they stood, the mountains behind the town were suffering the gravitational pull of the encroaching object. Chunks of rock drifted into the sky, with the peaks themselves whittling down to little more than stony hills. It was as though a still rain of jagged boulders strung over Nibelheim.

"That DEFINITELY doesn't look good," Nanaki said.

"Destruction never does," Vincent noted simply.

"I hate it when things threaten the Planet," the other added crossly.

"…no one loves it."

"True. Except the one doing the threatening."

Vincent glanced at his claw then at the sky. "…hmm."

"You know, if I had enough time, I'd go to Junon and see if I could get help. I made friends over there. They have weapons that used to belong to Shinra," Nanaki said.

"Send someone else to get help."

"I could , couldn't I? But…would they make it back in time with the cavalry before that thing hits Cosmo Canyon? And by the looks of those mountains, I think Nibelheim is pretty much lost. I say we evacuate the people so, at least, there won't be any casualties when it comes," Nanaki proposed.

"..."


	8. Part 8: Sister of the Last Days

_****_

Sister of the Last Days

Nanaki managed to vacate Nibelheim of its residents before the sphere had settled over town, and from a safe distance, observed the thing devastate the land. The light came down upon Nibelheim, followed by a blinding flash and sonic boom, then the scorching fire that leveled nearly everything. Nanaki deliberated. This thing was a floating ball of murder, and when it wasn't attacking towns, it still dealt damage to the land with its grand attraction.

"Grr… What is that thing? If I don't find a way to stop it, then... Hmph," Nanaki grunted unhappily and turned back to Cosmo Canyon. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something so slight, he would've never heeded it all looking at it straight. The sphere was veering ever so slightly to the west. It was peculiar. Taking note of this change in course, Nanaki went home.

Vincent stared into the flame of Cosmo Candle, cleansing guardian of the people. He could almost hear a voice whisper pleasantly to him, to walk into it and let it burn away all the sin and befouled flesh and memories of his horrors. Burn it all. Hypnotized by Cosmo Candle, he put his claw to the fire. Flame licked at the shiny golden surface. He felt neither felt the heat, pain nor pleasure. Then he thought…even though the fire may consume his flesh and turn his bones to ash, this claw might still exist thereafter. And his guilt would live on. But he could enter the cleansing flame and end it all. He would die at last. Such a fitting end for him. Just walk in and…

"Hey, where's Nanaki?" a voice yelled out. Vincent glanced over his shoulder. Three boys and two men came running up from the entrance of the settlement. They approached him. "Hey, you, do you know where Nanaki is?"

He shook his head.

"Oh… We have something really important to tell him," said one of the boys with a bandanna round his brow.

"Yeah, there's something coming across the sea to the west," said another boy.

"…like what?" Vincent queried.

"A big thing like a comet, but moving really kinda slow."

One of Vincent's eyebrows crept up in curious wonder. A comet-like object from across the sea?

"Nanaki!" exclaimed one of the two men. Nanaki appeared at the entrance. All of them save for Vincent ran to him. "Nanaki, we have news."

"News? Of what sort?" he asked.

"There's a thing that looks like a comet traveling over the sea in this direction."

"A comet? From where?"

"We were making a stop at Gold Saucer when we saw it. Some people say that it probably came from Junon, but others think it came from farther away than that."

"Ugh, what now? Has any damage been reported?" Nanaki questioned.

"Uh-uh," answered one of the boys.

"Well, I suppose that's okay, but now we have another thing to worry about." Nanaki flicked his ears as though he heard something strange. He switched round to Vincent. "Right, I almost forgot. Vincent, that giant green sphere seems to be changing course. Oh… It might be moving to meet the other thing that's coming. What do you think?"

"…Perhaps."

"But…" Nanaki paused. "There's still a chance Cosmo Canyon might come under attack. I don't want to abandon my home to ruin but… Or maybe I could gather everyone down into the Caves of the Gi. It's considerably deep in the cliffs, which might provide good protection. And my father… He promised that he would always protect Cosmo Canyon. Maybe, just maybe… Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll gather everyone into the Caves."

--

The emerald moon neared Cosmo Canyon as it headed west to presumably converge upon the other advancing over the sea. And, as per Nanaki's plans, he herded his people alongside the refugees from Nibelheim into the Caves of the Gi to wait out the possible obliteration of their home. They settled in the cavern before the altar where Nanaki's father, Seto, would forever look over Cosmo Canyon.

When the sphere crossed over the west side of the canyon, its bright green glow showered expectantly upon everything. Then came the succeeding sonic boom that rattled the walls of the cave. It seemed as if bombs rained down in Cosmo Canyon, for repeated shocks made everything quake and shudder, even dislodging stalactites from the ceiling. The frightened people huddled close to the walls to avoid the falling rock.

"Hold on, everybody! It'll be over soon," Nanaki voiced as loud he could over the quaking.

"Nanaki!" a child cried.

"What?!"

A little girl had strayed from the likely safety of being against the wall. She had fallen, in obvious peril if she couldn't be saved quickly enough. Nanaki broke away from the wall in attempt to save her. He dodged the falling rock as he made his way to the girl. Just as he was only five feet from her…

"Hold on, I'm coming!" Nanaki assured.

"Help, Nanaki!"

A sound, like a peal of lightning resonated from above. Everyone fell victim to a blind confusion, even Nanaki himself. But not Vincent. He knew not why but didn't care. He went for the girl and drove her to his red maned companion before another thunderous noise filled the cavern. Several great beams of luminous green light shot down through the ceiling. While all the other people were out of harm's way, Vincent found himself struck.

"Aah!"

"Vincent!"

Vincent experienced a familiar pain, the pain of being torn apart. This was when his thresholds of agony and anger reached and broken their limits. The Jenova within would tear out of his belly, out of his skin, consume him, become him, and he become it. This was when he could no longer control himself and the demon came out.

But this was a little different than other instances.

The demon's shackles were shattered. His claw. The light destroyed it and now the demon was totally released. But…

It was only the Beast of Galian. The horned purple one. It roared, wildly casting its darkly burning flares of energy into the air. They exploded, though impeding the descent of the falling rocks, they turning to dust by the swelling volatile orbs of fire.

The bombarding of the green light soon died down, signaling that the sphere had moved on. But the monster had yet to be quieted. Flares flew, endangering the people.

"Vincent!" Nanaki called out. But Vincent was unreachable.

He had to calm him down, somehow, or at least stop him from his rampantly aimless attack. He made a dash for the metamorphosed Vincent while his back was turned. He lunged, knocking it over and pinning it to the ground as best he could. It snarled and thrashed. "Vincent! Can you hear me? Calm down!"

It, he didn't listen.

Nanaki tried again.

"Vincent," he said with a little purr into the pointed ear of the beast. "Calm yourself. Calm, calm…" The Galian Beast growled and squirmed but its thrashing had been pacified. It groaned and exhaled a long loud breath. The Beast was calm. He was calm.

What remained was Nanaki sitting atop a naked Vincent, his true arm once hidden by the golden claw now uncovered. It was a dark and livid, veiny limb with squamous skin and long black nails. Nanaki finally witnessed the disfigurement done him by Hojo's twisted experiments with Jenova's cells. He looked away from the abominable limb to the shaken but unharmed people.

"Father, let's hope that there's still something left up there to live in…"

--

Author's note: Whew. This chapter was actually kind of tiring. See, I make up the storyline as I go along, based only on small ideas that might pop into my head along the way. For some reason, not many people can do that. I think that's weird. Others have to make out an outline of some sort to get a bearing on how their story is going to unfurl before they start writing. That's a big imagination for ya. And I have a big one, a big whopping creative imagination.


	9. Part 9: Nourish the Seeds of Sin

_****_

Nourish the Seeds of Sin

Vincent slept soundly, unaware of his injuries, even unaware of what happened to him. Oblivious to the world like a slumbering newborn. And while he slept, he was even impervious to his clawed dreams and the notions they left behind as mindful everlasting litter. But this siesta of his could not last. He knew it had to end again sooner or later, because the threat was still out there, mindless and unforgiving as it ever was. But…

_What does it matter to me, really? What does the annihilation of the Planet's people mean to me? I've spent decades dreaming of an end to this life that Hojo and Jenova maimed and left for dead without so much as a thought. Allowing the Planet to suffer beneath the beautiful but lethal light of the emerald moon is really nothing to me. I, who wishes for death, a permanent surcease to the pain in my undead soul. Let it kill, let it burn and hope that it slays me as well. Why should I care anymore? Why?_

_But then… I think of my nominal friends, who had shown me many things. Cloud, with his will, even after discovering long hidden and unbelievable truths about himself; Tifa, with her soft heart and conviction in those around her; Barret, with his wild spirituality; Cid and his doggedness; Nanaki and his loyalty; the girl ninja Yuffie and her vibrancy; the most humble of Shinra, Reeve; and lastly, Aeris with her strong, courageous heart and almighty love… I should care, minute as it may seem that I don't. For them, I should at least fight for what they sought to keep. _

Vincent awoke with the scent of scorched earth faintly wafting by his nostrils. He sluggishly opened his eyes. To his side there laid a gruesome looking limb, long black tapering nails protruding from the tips of the skeletal digits. He was taken aback. His heart raced.

"...what is this? Why?" He trembled and the black and blue skinned limb trembled along with him.

"Vincent?" Nanaki was near, to some relief.

"This isn't… What is it? It can't be…can it? Is this my…?"

"Vincent, what's wrong?" Nanaki asked.

"Is this...part of me? Is it?"

For a moment there was silence. Then, "Uh…I don't know what to say."

"Say it isn't," he maintained in subtle but genuine dread. Nanaki bowed his head in apology.

"I can't. Because it IS a part of you."

His monstrosity of an arm twitched as he gazed on at it. It was his arm, at one time sealed from prying eyes by the golden claw Hojo had placed on him, now bared to the world for all to see its true semblance. A freakish semblance the result of the dark side of science. He twisted his head from it in shame. "…cover it up."

"What?"

"I don't want to see it… Cover it up," Vincent repeated in a hushed tone.

"Okay," Nanaki said hesitantly. He called someone over to where Vincent lain on the ground covered by a blanket, and had his beastly arm wrapped snugly in a sheet and tied up with a long strip of leather.

"…what happened?" Vincent inquired exhaustively.

"You don't remember? You changed," Nanaki told him.

Vincent sighed and slowly sat up. His whole body ached and his skin burned when he dared move any part of his body. But the ache was trivial compared to any other ache he'd ever felt prior to then.

"Vincent…" Nanaki began, who had come to sit on his right side. "Uh, I don't mean to pry…but where did you get those scars on your back?"

"…"

"Ah, I understand. You don't have to tell me. But…they look like claw marks to me."

Vincent glared over at his companion. His scarlet eyes unnerved the other, abysmally lifeless orbs they were, set in a pale blank face. Eventually, to Nanaki's relief, he looked away. He refused to let anyone else know of the other atrocities that were inflicted upon him by Hojo, under Shinra mansion. No one bothered to listen to his screams…

Not wanting to wallow in his own self pity any longer, he took a second to study his surroundings. He saw that they had left the sanctity and asylum of the Gi's caves, that they were now above ground demolished by the emerald moon. The terrain had been completely seared down to every last stone and grain of dirt. Craters where the rays of green light had impacted upon the land riddled the canyon almost as far as the eye could see. Bugenhagen's observatory was nothing more than a domed pile of rubble and scrap. All the people's homes, ravaged. Dust and ashes. Nanaki's people picked about the site of destruction, salvaging what they could, meanwhile dreaming of how to recover.

"…where will you go, Nanaki?" Vincent asked. "Your home, it's gone."

"No. Our houses may be gone, but our home is not. Cosmo Canyon will always be our home and this is where we will stay to restore it to its former glory," he declared with subtlest fervor. Vincent, however, wasn't so sure of Nanaki's conviction. He would rebuild, risking the possibility that the emerald moon would come back and destroy his home again and again and again, until he had no more energy to do anything anymore and just surrender to death. Then what would be the point? What would be the point to it all?

--

The emerald sphere crossed the mountains that bisected the central half of the continent. North Corel laid in its warpath towards the other flying over the sea in its direction. And beneath the scintillating rays of Mako colored light, a century's hard work for their town toward betterment had been thwarted in an instant. The erstwhile destitute town had been reduced to rubble once again, though much more was lost now than then.

The second object, just as well a sphere like its destructive counterpart, resembled a moon more than the other did. A rotating ball of white light with the slightest pale green glow. The moving air about it was galvanized, forming a sparkling trail behind it, like the tail of a comet through space. The citizens and frequenters of Costa del Sol beheld the immense entity as it passed overhead in a splendor not unlike that all those years ago when Meteor hung in the sky, a still pendulum presaging a catastrophe that had been thankfully averted due to the effort of unsung heroes. Near soundless gales eclipsed by the rumbling of the spherical entity dashed through the beachside town for days until it drifted out of airspace.

But meanwhile…

Gongaga bore the fury of the emerald moon from over a stretch of a thousand miles, barely standing against the deadly light. And Gold Saucer, having been emptied to an extent of its fun goers, endured a similar cruel fate, crashing to earth in a blaze of broken dreams and soon to be lost souls. The prisoners of Corel Prison far below had nowhere to escape, and so awaited their respective quick and simultaneously slow deaths as burning debris fell upon them.

The plains turned to fields of ash, the desert bleached white by flame, forests the black and steaming graveyards of nature. The skies became gunsmoke, thick with the silenced cries of the dead, the dwindling screams of the dying, and the dismal moans of the wounded survivors. And nary a hope yet in sight…


	10. Part 10: Eve of the Sin Harvest

_****_

Eve of the Sin Harvest

Vincent tried to stay within the moderately safe haven of sleep. His demonic arm ached sporadically but in sleep, it was the least noticeable. But he could not stay in that restful sanctuary. Threads were strung around his heart, threads that were tugged taut as to draw him to some power he couldn't rightly identify. Every time he closed his eyes shut, the threads would be pulled, and he was propelled back to harsh reality.

He didn't move from his spot in days, despite Nanaki's concerns, and demurred the help of any of his people, as well. Having given up on Vincent and his chosen ineptitude, Nanaki left to do something about the calamitous entity raining deathly light from the sky.

After Nanaki departed, Vincent endeavored to sleep, but again, the strings were drawn tight around his heart so hard, he cried out.

Yet, that wasn't the only pain.

He felt those claws scratching at his intestines, the claws of Chaos striving for freedom. An electrifying agony shot through his spine which made him see stars. He writhed as something forced its way out of him, out of his back. He bounded to his hands and knees as though to vomit, his body heaving.

They pierced the skin of his back. The wings of Chaos. They sprouted from his shoulder blades, at first curled up like fresh new fronds of a jungle fern, then unfurling into their full span capable of blocking out the sun's rays. The black clawed webbed wings arched high into the air, a halo for the demonic of beings. But demonic Vincent didn't want to be. Nanaki's people who stood nearby gasped in noisy astonishment at such a spectacle as hims sprouting black wings.

He clenched his fists in subdued anger. He didn't want this sort of attention, this frightened recognition of the monster within. He needed to get away.

He searched. There had been clothes set out for him at some time or other. These he picked up and donned, however with wings, a shirt was useless, and so he took the blanket and draped it over himself.

"Damn wings…" Vincent staggered out of the little camp established by the survivors of the canyon's catastrophe and took flight with the dark pinions of Chaos to wherever they took him. They delivered him west, over the mountains.

--

The two entities that possessed the skies met at last several hundred miles from where Gold Saucer once assailed to touch the heavens. The emerald moon, like a cloud gravid with restless rain, released a spray of light that ignited the gloomy vault, and then poured down in countless glowing spears. Everything that had yet to be destroyed fell, and the already wounded had little energy left to withstand a second barrage of light. The Planet of forest green, of ocean blue, of earthen yellow, became the Planet of ash gray and of charcoal black. Death.

Yet it wasn't over.

Not by a long shot.

The second entity repelled what green light showered upon it and released its own whitish glare against the emerald moon. The sphere shrank back then billowed with a new energy. It tapered to the sky and down to the earth, becoming an immense tower. Gigantic swirling tendrils stemmed from the core sphere and smaller, thinner tendrils in turn branched from the larger ones. They almost resembled wings, wings molded from Lifestream. The white sphere motioned forward, intending to collide with the other.

Vincent was somehow shielded from the deadly luminescent shower that suddenly exploded in the sky. Because he was drawn. He was drawn to the final gathering place of the two entities and he couldn't die before he reached the hallowed grounds. Not yet. He was being called.

_Come…_

He heard a voice, soft and alluring, drawing him ever closer.

_Do not deny it. The attraction. Come, to where you belong…_

"To where…I belong?" The voice was right. Vincent was incapable of denying the allure, the sweet enticement into the caress of some unknown but not totally unknown thing. The voice was familiar. That voice, the voice of his nightmares. Jenova posing as Sephiroth with its added mechanical monotone. But could he turn away? Could he resist the power of Jenova? No. Because Chaos saw to that, by making it halfway to the surface of his weakened self, the seed of Jenova managed to take control and bring him to the mother of his demons, the mother of his living doom. To become its tool, to become part of it.

_Deny it. Deny it, Vincent!_

"What?" This new voice pierced the seductive veil of Jenova's whispers and confused Chaos's grasp on Vincent's muddled and debilitated psyche.

_Fight it! Fight her! Fight him!_

"Fight?"

_No. He is mine. Come to me and do my bidding, demon…_

"Aah!" Chaos battled with Vincent, the struggle being visible physically on his torn person. Tumbling to earth, his body lost much of the battle for self-domination.

_You can do it, Vincent! Fight! Help defeat Jenova! Help defeat Sephiroth just like last time!_

"…help? Is that…Cloud's voice? But…he's dead… You're dead."

_Come on, Vincent!_

"Ah… But I can't. I can't do it anymore. The pain, it's too much. Jenova is tearing me apart and I can't fight anymore. I just want it to end. Everything to end, forever…"

_You can make it end, my demon. Just come to me and I will rid you of your human pain._

"My human…" Vincent, with Chaos creeping up his flesh, rose to his feet on deteriorating strength. He lifted both arms to the dark but radiant sky as if suddenly in prayer. How beautiful the sky was. How the green light overlapped the soot and smoke that deprived the Planet of the sun, making the gloomy clouds seem as the underside of a devil's heart with pulsing verdant veins. How the tendrils of the emerald moon, now a divine pillar set in the earth and craving the heavens and space to be its own, meandered amongst themselves. The dark and ruined earth that moaned for relief as he did. "…but I can't leave with this as my last vision of the world, no matter how it betrayed me a normal life. I can't. I must…"


	11. Part 11: Sin Harvest: Endgame

_****_

Sin Harvest: Endgame

"I can't let it end like this… What about all the time I spent traveling with Cloud and everyone else, fighting Jenova and Sephiroth? Those experiences with them I can't erase from my mind, just as well I can't erase my sins, even if I should succumb to Jenova in return for her promise to rid me of pain, I can't… I can't let Jenova…and Sephiroth get away with this…"

Vincent took a very brief moment to unwrap his mutated arm. The veins pulsed with his polluted blood. There was ache where Chaos crawled higher up his arm, slowly but surely growing ever more powerful. His time left as a human was fast fading away. There were only two options remaining for him to choose, and regardless of whichever he selected, either possessed the same outcome.

_Vincent, help the Planet. It may seem like it's too late but there are still survivors out there that need a home, this Planet, to continue on in. So, please…_

"Cloud, if that really is you… When we fought Sephiroth together, you gave me the tiniest glimmer of hope to hang on to, for anything. So, with my last ounce of strength and humanity… I hope that what I do now may help the Planet see this through…"

Vincent splayed his wings and took to the sky rampant with the energy of the emerald pillar, this strange incarnation of what he now knew to be Jenova and Sephiroth. Flying past the wriggling tendrils at an amazing speed, he sped for the core sphere. It palpitated as a heart would, accompanied by even a heartbeat so hollow and inhuman. And as he neared the sphere, a figure came into view beyond the bright green light. It was like a fetus, several pairs of massive white wings dipped in night bowed over it as to protect. This could only be Sephiroth, guarded by the great summoned creature of Safer that he once fought and vanquished by Cloud's side.

"Sephiroth…" Vincent sought to break through the pulsating orb round the fetal Safer Sephiroth, charged with his Chaotic limb. The light of the second entity intensified and the pillar narrowed, but only slightly. But it was enough. His arm cracked part of the womblike encasing Sephiroth and out oozed liquid thick as blood but fulgurant as a white star. Abruptly, he was pulled in by some force, a force he easily recognized as Jenova's. Safer Sephiroth's wings spanned over him, obstructing the way Vincent came into the womb.

_Vincent, be mine as you were destined to be. My tool._

"You've already killed me; it's too late for any of that now. But I'm not going alone. For everything you'd done, I will take you down myself, with my own hands."

_But your hands are no longer your own. They are mine to use. Just look._

"But I am conscious, still. And now…" Vincent lunged for the sheltered body of Sephiroth that unfolded as he came closer. Safer Sephiroth's dark seventh wing spread from his right arm and shot at his assailant, tearing through his stomach. But Vincent did not relent. His hands closed around Sephiroth's neck and squeezed as hard as he could. The pale radiant face flickered with a life he was sure was present, and just as vulnerable as any human's. Vincent's claws oddly drew blood, which shocked him.

"Vincent…"

"What?" he gasped. The figure of Safer Sephiroth faded to some degree, where beneath it laid another. His heart nearly stopped.

"Vincent, I love you…"

"No. Is that you? What have I…?" His grip around the neck faltered as he gazed into the face of what looked so like Lucrecia. The large green eyes, the full rosy lips and apple cheeks, the cascade of flowing ginger hair that outlined her beautiful face. And he was strangling the life out of that. He couldn't believe his own eyes, his own actions.

"Vincent. I love you, I always loved you. Hojo may have had my body but you will always have my heart, so stop this. Stop this and you and I can go off to paradise together, just the two of us where no one can ever hope to find us. So please, Vincent, stop…"

"I…"

_Don't listen to her! That's just Jenova trying to trick you! You can do it, you can help end it right here! Just a little bit more…_

"Jenova… You've used Lucrecia and Sephiroth long enough. No more. This is the end for you, at last…" Vincent pressed harder on the throat between his fingers. The image of Lucrecia struggled for breath, reaching for his hands in hopes of prying them off, to no avail.

"I'm so sorry, Vincent…"

"…"

"I'm sorry that we can't be together, even though you killed me. I'm sorry…"

Thus did her image vanish to be replaced by Sephiroth, blood trickling down from the corner of his lips. He beamed a final grin at Vincent.

"Killed me once again…have you? Heh…how humiliating…but…"

"Goodbye, Sephiroth. It's time for you to rest, for eternity this time. And I…"

The light of the other entity fused with that of the emerald pillar, kindling its explosive energy, causing it to explode in a spray of a billion stars. The wisps of light fell like snow all over the Planet, setting the darkened sky alight, adorning the crumbled mountains and parched hills, brightening the ruined cities, igniting the murky oceans and seas, inspiriting the charcoal forests, making the deserts all a glimmer. Everything seemed alive.

Except…

--

Vincent laid in a green meadow, the sun shining down intensely on his closed eyelids. He frowned then steadily opened his eyes onto the bright flaming disc in the clear azure sky. It was a magnificent day, it all seemed. Then he heard laughter, the laughter of a child. A shadow whisked quickly by his head, varicolored flower petals floated into the air on the breeze succeeding the shadow. He saw the child, a little elfin thing of a child leaping here and there and running in circles. The child looked so familiar to him. Then he heard something which confirmed his thoughts:

"Sephiroth! Wait for me!" a woman's voice called to the boy that was undoubtedly Sephiroth. He was a fairy tale creature here in this meadow, a gray haired cherub trying to fly without wings. And here came his mother. Lucrecia. In a simple yet elegant white gown, she hastily followed behind the boy as he frolicked among the green grass and field of red and gold and purple and light blue blossoms.

_Is this paradise?_ Vincent reflected inwardly, all the while lying there watching the mother and son prance in this meadow.

Lucrecia turned his way and lent a delicate hand out in his direction. "Vincent, come with us…"

Such lovely little hands she had. He loved to feel her hands on his arm or his face, those silky digits accidentally brush his lips or weave along his back. Those hands, how he missed them so. Hands forged of soothing light. His long dreamt hand of light…that he couldn't reach.

Because he couldn't move his arm, he couldn't move anything at all.

"Vincent, come, get up. I know you can do it," she said in that soft, gentle voice of hers.

He tried to shake his head but it was impossible.

"Come on, try. Just try. You can do it."

"Lu…crecia…" Vincent murmured. He labored to raise his arm. He sensed his fingers move, then his hand, soon his entire arm. He reached out for Lucrecia but she was much too far away. "I can't reach…"

"Just come to me, Vincent. Come…"

"Mother," the child Sephiroth sounded. It was almost bizarre to hear him say that when it was directed towards Lucrecia, his actual mother and not the devil Jenova, that Hojo had tricked him into thinking was his mother.

"Vincent, just do it. Just come to me…"

"I'm sorry…I can't reach."

"You have to let go, then. Let go of it all."

"Let go? Of what?"

"Let go of all the guilt, all the sadness, all the pain, all of it. Then you can come."

"…I can't…"

"You're the only one stopping yourself. You keep yourself from everything else because of your sadness. You've made your prison and refuse to free yourself. That's what sadness is. A prison that people make for themselves, that only they can break out of if they just try. It's as simple as that. So, Vincent, will you let go of it all?"

"…I'm sorry, Lucrecia…" he muttered sadly.

"What holds you back?"

"I…always blamed myself for not being able to save you from Hojo, and Sephiroth, and until I atone, I can only suffer. But my time has ended without my having repented for my sins. And so they will go to the grave with me…"

"Vincent, my poor Vincent. I died with my sins but I have found peace in this afterlife. After realizing that my own sadness kept me anchored in that state trapped between the realm of the living and the dead, I decided to let it all slip away. And I was free. And this Sephiroth who stands beside me is the true Sephiroth, completely devoid of Jenova and Hojo's influence, the child that was supposed to live but died in my womb the moment the cells entered his unborn body. His memory of all that pain may be gone but at least he's free. Why can't you be like him, like us? Forget it all and stay here, with us."

She smiled and offered her hand a tad more persistently.

"It's…" Vincent sighed deeply and went on in a quiet voice, "it's not that easy for me. I've spent so many years feeling pain and guilt, I've forgotten how it's felt to…to be happy, and so it's the only thing I know. I don't want to be empty. Why continue on with no pain when there's no happiness to replace it? I'd rather feel something, anything, than nothing at all. So I just can't…"

"Vincent."

A dusty gale overwhelmed the lush green meadow, tossing Lucrecia and Sephiroth's hair to the wind. But her hand did not yield in her invitation to this heaven;y field of flowers and sunshine. Her hand shone through the dust, her hand of light. Vincent tried yet again to take it but she was too far away. The sandy gust became heavier, hindering his sight of Lucrecia's face, blotting out her willowy form totally.

"Vincent…"

The meadow was gone, abandoning him to the reality of the present. The present where Vincent's broken body lay in a pool of blood on the scarred barren earth. The tiny stars fell even then, collecting on his face and on his eyelids with an unwonted coolness that he found comforting. Sound was hollow and distant in his ears. The air was warm and smelling cleaner with each little breath that he took. Then he noticed a radiance come near, shaped like a man. He could hardly focus his eyes upon it as it bent over him.

"Vincent…" the radiance susurrated in his ears. "The Planet says thanks for doing what you did to help save it. That was really brave."

"…mnh," Vincent grunted silently. "I saw Lucrecia but I couldn't go to her. I couldn't let go of the pain. What a worthless and despicable man I am. To go like this…"

"Vincent. You could have gone to her. Why didn't you?" the radiance asked. He coughed, blood bubbled over his pallid lips.

"I just…" A single tear materialized in the corner of his eye, sparkling like a long lost jewel finally uncovered. "I don't know anymore. I…"

"You can't at least stay and watch the Planet recover? It may take years to come to heal from this, but it's nothing like the Crater. And the people still alive, this will be their toughest challenge. They'll need someone strong to see them through this or they might not make it at all. Won't you give them that much?"

Vincent cracked a brittle smile that crumbled just as quickly as it had appeared. "Thank you for…your belief that I could be that someone to…help the surviving races but… I died a long time ago. I'm useless now, have been useless ever since. I just want to rest…"

"You were a good man, Vincent. You'll be missed," said the radiance.

"No… I wasn't…" That single tear slid down his dirty, bloody cheek, clinging to the soft edge of his jaw then falling to the burnt earth under him, absorbed by the starving and injured soil. "No, Cloud… I won't…"

--

Nanaki left the abandoned underground Shinra compound, where he had managed to get in most of the people of Junon and of the small fishing village below. After the emerald rainfall that well nigh came close to collapsing Junon on the fishing village, Nanaki searched for a way to get home. Fortunately, one of his friends maintained a hydroplane in the compound and obliged to escort him over to the next continent. It took some number of days for them to arrive at what was left of Costa del Sol. From there on, Nanaki traveled alone to Cosmo Canyon. He saw how harsh and desolate the land was, with no grass, charred standing sticks for trees.

He stopped. A white and pale green light ascended into the sky adjacent a giant crater in the ground that extended over twenty miles in diameter, dispersing into a starburst of sparkles then nothing. Nanaki came down to where the light disappeared. He kept on trotting until he caught sight of a mass in a black pit. The closer he got, the more distinguishable the mass became from anything he thought it could have been. It was human, not only that but it was…

Vincent.

"Vincent?! Vincent!" He broke into a full gallop, stopped just short of a couple feet from his body. He stared down at his motionless form, examined every inch. The black wings curling up like leaves deprived of water under the blazing sun. The gaping wound in his stomach. His arms calmly crossed over his still chest. His pale face and his pale lips slightly parted with traces of blood on them. His closed eyes and dark lashes garnished with tiny wisps of incandescence. "Vincent…"

Nanaki nudged him with his paw but he didn't respond.

"Vincent, you can't be…?" He worked his paw to open one of Vincent's eyelids. His eye didn't even so much as twitch, his pupil not even dilate. Nanaki tried to rouse him another time by nudging him hard with his muzzle. "Vincent. Vincent, wake up. Wake up, Vincent… No. you can't be gone… You were my last, my last…friend. And now you're gone. I never wanted to outlive all my friends.

"Why can life be such a ruthless thing? Why did I have to have longevity like this? Vincent, I'm sorry. And to see you this way, it hurts my heart…

"Vincent, you probably never thought this but I cared. Whether you lived or died, I cared. I can't forget the times we spent together. You might've hardly talked to us but that was okay. It was only that we were together. Friends through thick and thin. And now you're gone, gone like a breeze on a spring day. But don't you worry. You won't be forgotten. I'll carry on your memory, just like I carry on the memories of the others. Each breeze is different, sometimes small and insignificant, at others large and bold, and yet others quiet but strong, the list goes on and on. Humans are but such breezes, so uneventful in the grand scheme of things, but fascinating and unique and of the essence to those individuals whom they touch.

"Goodbye, Vincent…"


End file.
